“Educators have been talking about the ‘digital divide’ for two decades, and while some progress has been made in closing the gap, inequities persist in communities across the country,” said Charlotte Bewersdorff, Merit’s vice-president of marketing and member engagement, in the release.

While about 92 percent of respondents to a town Internet survey reported they have Internet at home, 44 percent said it is not sufficient for their use — it is either "way too slow" or "not fast enough." And 7.4 percent of respondents said Internet service isn't available at their homes.

E-connectivity is not simply a rural issue; Internet expansion, economic productivity, and food security contribute to each citizen’s quality of life, regardless of where they live. The benefits of broadband e-connectivity accrue not only to the producers using Next Generation Precision Agriculture technologies, but also to consumers throughout America and the world who value a safe and efficient food supply.

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Indeed, many municipal broadband projects are undertaken because the Wall Street metric does not work. The town may be too remote, the population may be too sparse, or the demographic nature may not be consistent with the template used by private sector companies in their profit-maximizing decisions on where and whether to deploy. Those are precisely the circumstances, however, in which the community benefits of providing broadband become most profound, and most valuable.